This page in a nutshell:Appropedia is not Wikipedia! We aim to have few, simple, intuitive, versatile, smart, beautiful, well-documented and multilingual templates.Read more...

This page describes the current template conventions on Appropedia. For a guide on how to use templates, see Help:Templates.

General guidelines[edit | edit source]

• Minimize templates - Templates make pages more difficult to edit and translate, so use only when necessary or appropriate.
• Use simple and intuitive names - For example Template:Notice instead of Template:Mbox (as in Wikipedia).
• Use lowercase and dashes in parameter names - For example access-date instead of accessDate or any other variant.
• Use meta templates when appropriate - Meta templates unify templates throughout Appropedia. They also make site-wide improvements easy.
• Parameter values in content pages should be plain text - All wikitext should be hidden behind the template. This allows template developers to improve the processing of the values. Templates calls within other templates (aka nested templates) in content pages are especially undesirable, since they can't be edited with the visual editor.
• Use sensible defaults - Ideally, templates should have no required parameters (example).
• Correlate parameter names and semantic properties - If a parameter sets a semantic property, try to keep a correlation between the parameter name and the semantic property. For example, the parameter derivative-of of the Template:Page data corresponds to the Property:Derivative of.
• Learn by example - Visit Category:Templates and learn from existing templates. When in doubt, post at the village pump.

Non-English templates[edit | edit source]

Appropedia is a single wiki with content in several languages (unlike Wikipedia that is a actually many wikis, one per language). Therefore, sometimes it becomes desirable to create templates in languages other than English. For simple templates (such as notices) we just create the new template in the desired language and add it to Category:Non-English templates (example). However, for more complex templates (example) the preferred method is:

1. Create the new template as a call to the old one but with translated parameters (example)
2. Write the documentation of the new template in the new language, but add the template data in both English and the new language (example), else the visual editor won't work well
3. Add the new template to Category:Non-English templates

See also[edit | edit source]

• Category:Templates - All templates on Appropedia
• Help:Templates - Guide on how to use templates